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Posted Feb 7, 2009, 4:02 AM
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Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: Ottawa
Posts: 129
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I was browsing around the Ottawa Citizen archives and found these two articles from the June 9, 1998 paper about the NCC's grand scheme to widen Metcalfe and add more greenspace to the area. Unfortunately the renderings weren't available online. 
Regardless of what you think of the plan, I think most people will find these articles a good read. 
Quote:
Copyright Southam Publications Inc. Jun 9, 1998
A `grand' vision: Widened Metcalfe `boulevard' is centrepiece of NCC's 50-year plan for Ottawa; [Final Edition]
Tom Spears. The Ottawa Citizen. Ottawa, Ont.: Jun 9, 1998. pg. A.1.FRO
The National Capital Commission wants an Ottawa-Hull closer to its waterfront and wilderness, and at the heart of it a "grand boulevard" to show off Parliament Hill.
The NCC hopes the capital will follow the concepts laid out yesterday for the next 50 years. They are based on preservation of heritage, harmony between nature and buildings, wide-open spaces, and a clear view of Parliament Hill.
NCC chairman Marcel Beaudry says his work so far is only a "vision," and all of it -- or none of it -- could come to pass.
Mr. Beaudry also pledged the NCC won't expropriate land to force its will on landowners.
Regional Chair Bob Chiarelli called the plan a vision that's "long overdue."
Among the highlights:
- Either a "grand boulevard" or a more modest "urban square" running south from Parliament Hill along Metcalfe Street.
The most ambitious part of the plan, this would require demolishing buildings on the west side of Metcalfe for anywhere from one to 17 blocks.
It would create a wide-open space through which people would get a full, panoramic view of the Centre Block and Peace Tower from the south. The expanse of green space could be either 50 or 90 metres wide.
- A gradual plan to buy land on the shoreline of Hull and convert it to green space.
This would allow closer approaches to the shoreline in Hull and along the edges of Chaudiere and Victoria islands.
"It is one area where we could see pedestrians moving from one shore to the other," said NCC planner Yves Gosselin.
Since much of the Hull and island site belongs to E. B. Eddy Forest Products Ltd., planners say the plan "will lead to dialogue and we hope a certain consensus" with the company over 25 to 50 years.
- Extension of Bank Street, for pedestrians only, north to the edge of the escarpment and down the hill to the Ottawa River.
A dock would serve as a place to catch water taxis to the Museum of Civilization and other waterfront sites.
- A new major road connecting the Interprovincial Bridge and Sacre-Coeur Boulevard with Gatineau Park, to allow easier car access to the wilderness.
- Development -- finally -- of LeBreton Flats.
Look for open green space -- a "common" -- across the middle of the flats, with residential development on the southern third of the site and offices on the northern third, along the water.
The NCC is in the final stages of acquiring land from Ottawa and Ottawa-Carleton, and should be able to do the detailed planning in 2001.
Mr. Beaudry spent a lot of time yesterday explaining this is not yet a formal plan.
"We've put ideas on the table," Mr. Beaudry said. "All of these ideas are there to be discussed."
Mr. Beaudry said he wants the reaction of media, politicians, voters "and everyone," and only after all the reaction is in will the NCC talk about setting priorities within the plan.
"It's ideas that are out there, ideas for the next 50 years," he said.
There's no schedule, no budget, and no political approval, not even from the NCC's own board.
Asked about the cost of putting such a grand plan into effect, he replied: "We're not talking about money now."
When Jacques Greber announced his master plan nearly half a century ago there was no budget then for acquiring land either, he said, yet slowly the NCC built up the green belt.
"I think that money will be available," he said. "If there's a will, I think that it will be possible."
French planner Jacques Greber produced a master plan for Ottawa- Hull in 1950 that led to wide-open spaces such as the green belt and Gatineau Park, as well as the basis of urban development.
"This is a concept plan. I'm sure there will be a lot of changes," Mr. Chiarelli said.
"But I think the important thing is that this type of vision is long overdue. We had the Greber Plan from 50 years ago, which essentially has been completed for the last eight or 10 years, and there's been nothing to replace it.
"What we have now is a new Greber Plan," Mr. Chiarelli said.
"It's a vision for the capital for 50 years to continue the work to make Ottawa one of the great world capitals.
"We have the vision, we have the goals. I think we have to ... let this type of vision happen.
"You need this sort of plan so that people 50 years from now can look back and say there was some foresight and good planning to create a better capital."
"An enormous number of questions will be asked," Mr. Beaudry predicted, about how the plan will fare under varying economic conditions, political changes and budgets.
"We don't have those answers today," he said.
"The NCC does not intend to go and use the expropriation law to acquire the land that could be needed if we are to achieve the goals we've set out for ourselves.
"The expropriation law is not at all in the picture."
Liberal MP Eugene Bellemare was the most enthusiastic at yesterday's announcement.
"Finally, finally the echoes of (Jacques) Greber have come back," he said.
He said the new plan represents the first time in a long time that the NCC has shown an overall vision for the capital region.
"In opening up that vision I hope you'll stick to your guns and use your tenacious, if not obstinate, character," he said, as Mr. Beaudry laughed.
Mr. Beaudry also said he won't "sacrifice" chunks of the green belt to raise cash to pay for other parts of the capital vision plan.
"That (selling the green belt) is not our intention for the next 50 years," he said. "There's no question of that. The green belt is there to stay, and may be enlarged when opportunities come up."
The green belt will remain, apart from one or two pieces that are being sold because they don't really belong, such as a parcel near Blair and Innes Roads in Gloucester, NCC staff said.
In return, the NCC wants to buy more environmentally sensitive land, such as parts of the Mer Bleue bog, that are not yet within the official green belt.
If green belt land is sold, Mr. Beaudry added, that money will be designated for improving remaining pieces of it, not siphoned off to pay for NCC property elsewhere.
Yesterday's announcement didn't include the overall strategy for the future of Gatineau Park. That plan will be approved next fall, Mr. Beaudry said.
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Quote:
Copyright Southam Publications Inc. Jun 9, 1998
The Miracle on Metcalfe Street: NCC's 50-year vision a panoramic promenade to Parliament Hill Series: Finding our Future; [Final Edition]
Tom Spears. The Ottawa Citizen. Ottawa, Ont.: Jun 9, 1998. pg. E.1.FRO
Over three days, the Citizen is looking at what the future could hold for the region in development and growth. Yesterday: Turning the Daly siteinto a garden paradise.Today: The NCC's wish-list for thenation's capital.Tomorrow: The future of the CentralExperimental Farm.
At the heart of the NCC's new plan for the capital is an ambitious dream of opening up a panoramic view of Parliament Hill.
It would mean buying and getting rid of a vast swath of downtown architecture, and could take the whole 50-year period covered by the new plan.
There are wide-open boulevards in many capital cities that generally show off seats of government, the NCC says.
The Mall in Washington. The Champs Elysees in Paris.
And now, Metcalfe Street in Ottawa?
Today, the NCC planners say, there's a problem: Metcalfe Street should give people a clear view north to the Hill, but because it's a little east of the Peace Tower, the view is blocked.
The new plan for Canada's Capital has four options, all variations on a single theme:
Buying and knocking down buildings to give people a clear view of Parliament Hill from farther away.
The solution, NCC Chairman Marcel Beaudry said, is to widen Metcale to the west, while leaving the street's east side intact.
"There's only one way (to accomplish this)," said NCC planner Yves Gosselin. "You have to acquire those properties (on the street's west side) and demolish them."
Mr. Beaudry pledged yesterday he would not expropriate buildings. He said the NCC hopes to buy gradually over the next 50 years, building its "grand boulevard" as it goes.
"It's a vision," Mr. Beaudry said yesterday as reporters peppered him with questions: When? How far? At what cost? Who's going to pay?
"It's not a project that the NCC has at the moment," he said.
He laid out four options, ranging from a park-like "urban square" extending a block and a half south of Wellington Street to a full boulevard running all the way to the Canadian Museum of Nature -- 17 blocks away.
Any of these options, Mr. Gosselin said, "would open up the view to Parliament Hill along the Metcalfe Street axis."
A wide boulevard, 90 metres across, would give the most symmetrical view of the Centre Block, he said.
But he said a narrower version, 50 metres across, would still give a clear view, and the assymetry would be more in keeping with the Gothic building style.
In this approach, a person standing in the middle of the boulevard would see the Peace Tower and all but the west end of the Centre Block.
In all versions of the plan, the east-west streets would continue to carry traffic, and would not be blocked by the boulevard, much the way through traffic cuts Sparks Street mall. The effect would be to create a series of tree-filled squares with the boulevard.
While NCC staff insist none of the plans are firm, they are using four main options:
- Option A: The simplest proposal would be an urban square running south, directly across Wellington Street from the Peace Tower. In one version the square would extend to the south side of Sparks Street, and in the other it would stretch down to Albert Street.
- Option B: Like Option A, this would extend south to Laurier. It would be wider, however, with a divided street and a park-like space of grass and trees down the centre.
- Option C: Build a narrow boulevard, though still wider than today's street, south from the Hill to Laurier Avenue. It would have a single paved street, but would still be wide enough for the Changing the Guard ceremony.
The street would line up exactly with the Peace Tower, unlike the present Metcalfe layout.
There would be a treed space along the east side of the street, which gets more sunshine than the west.
- Option D: This is the big one, the dream of a "grand boulevard" lined with trees all the way from McLeod Street to Parliament Hill.
The idea is that a person standing in the middle could see the past and present Parliament Buildings at once: The Canadian Museum of Nature served briefly as Parliament after the fire of 1916.
There would be "major" new parking lots constructed under the line of grassy rectangles, easing parking problems on the hill itself, he said.
The concept also calls for the northern section of the boulevard to be wide-open spaces for tourists coming to see the Hill, while the southern end would have parks more suited to families in Centretown.
People have been studying Metcalfe Street as a grand entrance to the Hill for most of a century, beginning with the Holt Plan of the Parliament Hill area in 1915, and continuing with Greber's plan of 1950.
Greber, however, eventually dropped the idea, opting instead to have visitors slant in from the southeast along an avenue that was never built.
Now, says the NCC, "Metcalfe Street warrants re-examination as a way to create a dramatic entrance to Parliament Hill."
"There are four different options, and those options could find support, (or) they could be controversial. I don't know."
All of them would require demolishing well-known buidlings, some of them heritage structures.
The first to go, ironically, would be the NCC Information Centre - - the very building where yesterday's press conference to announce the new plan was held. It's a heritage building, the former Molson Bank, on the corner of Metcalfe and Wellington.
After that, even a small "urban square" design would run into the old U.S. Embassy and the Four Corners building at the corner of Sparks Street and Metcalfe.
Asked how the NCC would acquire all that land if it's not willing to expropriate, he said: "On a negotiation basis. I think that properties on a basis of 50 years (into the future) will become available."
The simplest option, the shortest piece of open square just south of Parliament Hill, would be the quickest and easiest to put into effect, he said. That's because the federal government already owns more than half of the land required for it.
"We would acquire it bit by bit," Mr. Beaudry said. And gradually, as land is acquired, the NCC could build its urban squares into a single grand boulevard one block at a time.
Regional chair Bob Chiarelli, who attended yesterday's announcement ceremony, was outspoken in praise of the idea of opening up Metcalfe Street.
When a reporter asked whether the scope of the grand boulevard was far-fetched, Mr. Chiarelli answered: "I don't think these plans are far-fetched at all.
"If you go back to the Greber Plan of 50 years ago, they conceived on paper of the Greenbelt, which never existed, (and) to extend the parkway system, to extend Gatineau Park, to decentralize the government to Tunney's Pasture and Hog's Back.
"That was done on paper. It was a vision, and that vision became reality."
"Metcalfe Street is a regional road, so we have to be intimately involved with the planning of that," he said. "We own the street and we own the land under the street (where parking lots would be built under the NCC plan).
"Certainly we want to be a very active partner with the government of Canada and the City of Ottawa to try to make these visions come to reality."
"I think there's a tremendous opportunity there -- not only for underground parking, but also underground linkages" with downtown.
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